B-Hebrew: The Biblical Hebrew Forum

In figuring out Abraham’s language, the following three questions are of critical importance: (i) what literary works are attested in Bronze Age Canaan, and is the writing in cuneiform or alphabetical; (ii) what extensive correspondence is attested as coming from Bronze Age Canaan, and whether the writing is cuneiform or alphabetical; and (iii) what writing medium (cuneiform or alphabetical), if any, is portrayed in the last 40 chapters of Genesis as being used by the Hebrew Patriarchs.

1. Gilgamesh at Late Bronze Age Megiddo -- Cuneiform

Per Israel Finkelstein, the only extensive literary work attested in Bronze Age Canaan is Gilgamesh at Late Bronze Age Megiddo -- in cuneiform:

“Israel Finkelstein: A Provenance Study of the Gilgamesh Fragment from Megiddo. Abstract: A Late Bronze Age fragment of a clay cuneiform tablet with the Gilgamesh Epic was found in the 1950s on the surface at Megiddo. The presence of scribes in Megiddo is evident from the el-Amarna letters. This is the only first-class literary Mesopotamian text ever to be found in Canaan.”

http://www.academia.edu/1070693/A_Prove ... om_Megiddo

2. Amarna Letters from Late Bronze Age Canaan -- Cuneiform

All Bronze Age correspondence originating in Canaan of which any significant number of examples have survived dates to the Late Bronze Age. By far the most extensive and best example of that phenomenon consists of the large number of Amarna Letters from Canaan. Though they were written in, and came from, Canaan, all but one of the Amarna Letters were found in Akhenaten’s capital city in Egypt: Amarna [Akhetaten]. One Amarna Letter was found at Beth Shean. (It may be a practice letter by a scribe copying an actual letter.)

The language of the Amarna Letters is Canaanite (essentially the same as pre-Hebrew, and as such essentially the same as Abraham’s language); provided that, very oddly, most of the vocabulary in the Amarna Letters consists of Akkadian words. There are a few Canaanite words used in the Amarna Letters, and in addition, there are also a considerable number of the famous Canaanite glosses. So we know for certain that in the mid-14th century BCE, there were many, many, m-a-n-y scribes in Canaan who could write Canaanite words using cuneiform. In addition to the vocabulary of Canaanite words in the Amarna Letters being similar to standard Biblical Hebrew (though the endings usually differ), the same basic sentence structure applies. In particular, both in Amarna Letters from Canaan, and in standard Biblical Hebrew, a declarative sentence usually starts with the verb (whereas the verb usually comes last in the Akkadian language).

3. Type of Documents Judah Routinely Signs (Authenticates) in Canaan in the Patriarchal Narratives -- Cuneiform

“[Genesis 38:] 18. seal-and-cord. …The cylinder seal [used by Judah at Genesis 38: 18, 25]…many specimens have turned up in Palestine. …[T]he term [for the cylinder seal, which was used to authenticate/sign cuneiform documents, in Hebrew is]…ḥōtām as here. Now all cylinder seals were perforated vertically for suspension, so that the seal and the cord or chain on which it was worn became a unit.” E.A. Speiser, “Genesis” (1962), p. 298.

Judah and the Patriarchs were themselves illiterate. Yet they knew how important it was to have scribes who used cuneiform prepare written documents. In that world, it in fact is not terribly surprising that the first Hebrews, living in tents in southern Canaan as illiterate shepherds, would have made the fateful decision to have their great oral composition, the Patriarchal narratives, recorded in cuneiform writing during the lifetime of the early Hebrew author of that brilliant composition. As noted above, we know for a fact that there were many, many, m-a-n-y scribes in Late Bronze Age Canaan who could write Canaanite words using cuneiform. The first Hebrews interacted with such scribes on a regular basis, at least several times a year (for example in entering into a contract for the shearing of sheep, as in Judah’s case). So if the first Hebrews living in Late Bronze Age southern Canaan decided to have a written record prepared of their most memorable composition, they would definitely have hired a scribe to record it in cuneiform on clay tablets -- roughly similar in most ways to the Amarna Letters, but using exclusively Canaanite words.

* * *

There is no objective basis whatsoever for imagining that Abraham had a library consisting of alphabetical writing on parchment. By sharp contrast, there can be no technical objection to the possibility that the first Hebrews, living in tents as shepherds in southern Canaan in the mid-14th century BCE Late Bronze Age, could have retained a scribe, on a one-time basis for the occasion, to record the Patriarchal narratives in cuneiform writing -- using Abraham’s language: Canaanite/pre-Hebrew words.

The proof that this actually is the case is that (i) the proper names in the received text of the Patriarchal narratives all fit the world of the mid-14th century BCE perfectly, while in many cases (such as Hurrian names in Canaan and the northern Transjordan) not fitting most other time periods in the Bronze Age; and (ii) the substantive content of the received text recalls with p-i-n-p-o-i-n-t historical accuracy the unique, well-attested circumstances of Year 13 in Late Amarna: in Canaan, in the northern Transjordan, in Syria, and in Egypt.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

Here’s another Canaanite gloss in the Amarna Letters that is the same word as in standard Biblical Hebrew. This comes from a letter addressed to Milkilu the Amorite (whom I see as being one and the same person as Biblical Mamre the Amorite), who ruled the Ayalon Valley at the beginning of Year 13 from Gezer, a huge city in the southwest Ayalon Valley. (Meanwhile, the northern two-thirds of the Ayalon Valley was virtually deserted, as there was not enough rainfall to do viticulture or other agriculture. In the mid-14th century BCE, the northern rural Ayalon Valley had reverted to pastureland, and no one was there except tent-dwelling herders of sheep and goats -- the first Hebrews. The Patriarchs’ “Hebron” is not the same place as the high-altitude fortress city south of Jerusalem that, in the 1st millennium BCE but not earlier, acquired the name “Hebron” [though the existence of such fortress city long pre-dates the 1st millennium BCE]; rather, in the Patriarchal narratives, “Hebron” : ḫa-ba-ru-u[n]-ne : חברון is a Hurrian-based Patriarchal nickname [meaning “sky, heaven, nirvana” in Hurrian] for the virtually-deserted rural pastureland of the northern Ayalon Valley.)

Milkilu the Amorite/Mamre the Amorite knew Abraham personally, and they spoke the same language: Canaanite/pre-Hebrew.

At Amarna Letter EA 369: 9, the logogram GADA.MEŠ is glossed with the west Semitic [Canaanite/pre-Hebrew] word malbašu, or ma-al-ba-ši, meaning ‘clothing, garment, vestment’. We see this same word in standard Biblical Hebrew at the very end of II Kings 10: 22: מלבוש. All four true consonants are identical, as is the meaning.

When you’re looking at a Canaanite gloss in a letter written to or by Milkilu the Amorite (who is Biblical Mamre the Amorite), you’re looking at a word in Abraham’s vocabulary, as used by a person who, per Genesis 14: 13, was (in early Year 13, per Genesis 14: 4) in confederate relationship with Abraham himself. Is that exciting or what?

When one asks “what language did Abraham speak”, the answer can be found in only one place: the Canaanite [pre-Hebrew] of the Amarna Letters.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

Kirk Lowery wrote:

Jim Stinehart with his doctorate in law degree thinks he can snowjob us with his sophisticated sounding claims as he tries to pretend he’s Perry Mason, but when compared to reality, they just make him look ridiculous.

Moderate your rhetoric, Karl. Ad hominem is not allowed.

Thanks!

Sorry, that was not meant to be an ad hominem attack, rather just a description of his postings that I find silly and intellectually challenged.

When he spells out words with hyphens between each letter, that looks like courtroom histrionics like what one sees in movies of courtroom scenes, like the old Perry Mason TV series. That’s not what one expects to find in scholarly debates. That finally make sense when one realizes that he is a lawyer, and not a scholar.

I remember when he first came on this list, he knew no Hebrew. Rather what he wanted us to do was to use our Hebrew knowledge to verify his strange theory that by mythologizing Genesis, i.e. not taking as literal or as history, that one could thereby verify the historicity of Genesis. Of course, the way the Hebrew language is written in Genesis leaves no room for such self-contradictory mythologizing/demythologizing. When asked for his background so we may better craft our answers for his understanding, he obfuscated in true lawyerly fashion.

His references to other people whom he considers great may be done to impress us because of the identity of the persons he quotes or cites, but it’s the ideas, not the persons, that counts. Such actions come across as an attempt of a snowjob, rather than an attempt to convince by the strength of the ideas presented.

While I disagree with it based on evidence, I find that the JEPD-R theory, or whatever its adherents choose to call that theory today, is more intellectually honest than what I find in the essays of Jim Stinehart.

My mistake was to read part on one of Jim Stinehart’s essays, and comment on it. I’ll try to ignore him and never read anything by him (other than legal works) ever again.

To return to the top, this was not an attempt to attack the person of Jim Stinehart, rather it was to refer to his actions, i.e. the words and format of his essays, and propose an explanation as to why he writes the way he does.

Karl W. Randolph.

Karl,

Thanks for your cooperation. I have no objection to any disagreement you may have with Stinehart. Just argue against his evidence and logic, if you are so inclined, and not his person, his occupation or his character. All those are irrelevant to what we attempt to do here. Or do not respond to him at all. Your choice.

Princeling Abimelek in the Amarna Letters is one and the same person as princeling Abimelek in the Patriarchal narratives. (Both in the Amarna Letters and in the Patriarchal narratives, Abimelek is constantly fretting about contested access to valuable water wells.)

So when first Abraham, and then later Isaac, talk to Abimelek, they are speaking to him in Canaanite/pre-Hebrew. We know some of Abimelek’s actual Canaanite vocabulary, per the back-to-back Canaanite glosses at Amarna Letter EA 147: 56:

1. nu-uḫ-ti : “I am at rest”. The last word at Proverbs 29: 9 is נחת, meaning “rest”. As is so often the case, the consonants are identical, as is the meaning.

In the Patriarchal narratives, this word is used as the proper name of one of Esau’s grandsons, at Genesis 36: 13, meaning “Rest” (in Hebrew): נחת.

2. ba-ṭì-i-ti : “I am confident”. Psalm 25: 2: בטחתי. The only difference is that the I as its own separate syllable in this Canaanite gloss shows up as a heth/ח in standard Biblical Hebrew. This word in the Amarna Letters is viewed by “Dictionary of the North-West Semitic Inscriptions” as being comparable to bṭḥ. (See Shlomo Izre’el at p. 424 here: https://www.academia.edu/987905/Review_ ... scriptions.) All the rest of the consonants are identical, as is the meaning.

As an adverb, this word appears in the Patriarchal narratives, when Simeon and Levi attack the city of Shechem “confidently” or “boldly”: בטח. Genesis 34: 25.

* * *

It’s exciting when historical figures from the Patriarchal narratives have some of their actual west Semitic vocabulary recorded as Canaanite glosses in the Amarna Letters, and these same Canaanite/pre-Hebrew words then show up in various places throughout the Hebrew Bible, including in the truly ancient Patriarchal narratives.

If you want to see Abraham’s language up close and personal, it’s right there -- in the Canaanite glosses recorded in cuneiform in the Amarna Letters.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

Jim says
We see this same word in standard Biblical Hebrew at the very end of II Kings 10: 22: מלבוש.

Says I
What is interesting about the word מלבוש MA-LB-U-$ is its peculiar redundant composition. The word is from the root לבש, 'put on', with the personal pronoun היא, 'he', inserted between the second and third radical to turn the root LB$ into the noun LB-U-$, namely, 'it is a dress'. Then, the independent מה MAH, 'that which is', is additionally hitched to the lower end of the word to finally produce the compounded word MA-LB-U-$.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

1. Isaac Fried wrote: “What is interesting about the word מלבוש MA-LB-U-$ is its peculiar redundant composition.”

Yes, but note that such “redundancy” was not added in 7th century BCE Jerusalem. No, this form of this Hebrew word is as old as the hills, appearing in this very form way back in the mid-14th century BCE in the Amarna Letters. When Abraham wanted to say “garment”, he may have used this very word.
It’s quite surprising how very little change there is in vocabulary in going from the Canaanite/pre-Hebrew of the Amarna Letters in the mid-14th century BCE, to standard Biblical Hebrew as of 7th century BCE Jerusalem. On this thread we are confirming that many Hebrew words that appear throughout the Hebrew Bible are the very words that Abraham himself would have known and used in the Patriarchal Age.

2. Now let’s turn to some Canaanite words written by the scribe of Hurrian princeling Biridiya of Megiddo. As I have noted previously, the Canaan of Abraham’s day (which I view as being the Amarna Age) was largely dominated by Hurrian princelings with Hurrian (non-Semitic) names. Typical in this regard are Biridiya of Megiddo and IR-Heba of Jerusalem, both of whom were Hurrian princelings during Abraham’s time.

The first word we will look at is not a Canaanite gloss but rather is, somewhat rarely, simply a Canaanite word, used here to mean “harvest”.

This Canaanite word, written in cuneiform at Amarna Letter EA 244: 14, is transliterated either as Ka-Zi-ra or ka-ṣi-ra. That’s obviously the following Hebrew word that means “harvest”: קציר. Wm. Moran transliterates this Hebrew word as: qāṣîr. This is essentially an exact match. This word appears (as קציר) in the Patriarchal narratives, with this meaning, at Genesis 30: 14; 45: 6. This word appears 52 other times elsewhere in the Bible.

As is so often the case, Abraham’s Canaanite/pre-Hebrew vocabulary is virtually the same as Hebrew words that appear both in the Patriarchal narratives and in much later books in the Bible. This vocabulary is not “new”, and is not redolent of mid-1st millennium BCE Jerusalem. No way. Rather, this is truly ancient west Semitic vocabulary, coming straight out of the Canaanite/pre-Hebrew of the Amarna Letters from the mid-14th century BCE.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

The word קציר QACIYR is of the root קצר QCR, 'cut, short', including the the personal pronoun (PP) היא, 'he/she', reduced to the mere vowel I, and inserted between the second and third radicals. The PP turns the root into a noun meaning 'it is a thing having the nature of QCR'.

Isaac Fried, Boston University

Now let’s look at another Canaanite/pre-Hebrew word from that same Amarna Letter written by the Canaanite scribe for Hurrian princeling Biridiya of Megiddo. In this case, we are looking at a classic Canaanite gloss at Amarna Letter EA 244: 16; so we know for sure that this word means “city gate”.

This Canaanite/pre-Hebrew word is transliterated from the cuneiform as: ša-aḫ-ri.

Before analyzing this word, we must recall that cuneiform generally could not distinguish between gutturals, including the three following gutturals in particular: (i) ghayin/ġ, vs. (ii) regular heth/ḫ, vs. (iii) “soft” heth/ḥ. So although the scholarly guess here is a regular heth/ḫ, in fact the Canaanite scribe may well have intended a ghayin/ġ.

Furthermore, as everyone knows, Hebrew alphabetical orthography does not distinguish between ghayin/ġ and ayin/‘. So the middle consonant here (i) may be a ghayin/ġ, which would be (ii) rendered in alphabetical Hebrew orthography as: ע.

With that as necessary background, it’s now child’s play to find the comparable Biblical Hebrew word that means “city gate”. It is: שער.

We see that Biblical Hebrew word, with that spelling and meaning, at (for example) Genesis 19: 1 in the Patriarchal narratives. This word appears 371 times throughout the Hebrew Bible.

The foregoing linguistic analysis, which sees the middle consonant in this word as having originally been a ghayin/ġ, is largely confirmed by looking at the Ugaritic word for “city gate”, which is: tġr.

Thus this Hebrew common word originally was (though this particular spelling could not be specified either in cuneiform or in alphabetical Hebrew) as follows: רġש. In alphabetical Hebrew writing, שער, that middle letter looks like an innocent ayin; but in fact, it originally was a super-exciting ghayin/ġ, in this Canaanite/pre-Hebrew word that Abraham would have known.

Jim Stinehart
Evanston, Illinois

שער possibly refers to just the opening in the wall.

Isaac Fried, Boston University